Richard Hermann: The real threat

Richard Hermann

Wednesday

Nov 29, 2017 at 2:00 PM

The devastation that Donald Trump, his monumentally dysfunctional administration and the Trump-tweaked and twittered Republican Party have wrought domestically in only 10 months is matched only by the chaos it is fomenting throughout the world. Once Trump is gone, the internal damage will take years to undo. The global damage, including the harm to our national security, may never be corrected.

This particular bill of particulars includes cozying up to our mortal enemy, Russia, the indicators of which have become too many to itemize; going a step further and providing top-secret information to an enemy intent on destroying our democracy; pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, rendering the U.S. unique and isolated among the world’s 200-plus nations; rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership instead of renegotiating its weaknesses, thus opening the door to China to assume primacy in the region; discarding human rights advocacy, instead expressing admiration for thugs and dictators; accepting Syria’s butcher, Assad, as a de facto ally; demoralizing our intelligence agencies and impugning their professionalism; leaving our allies clueless, wondering what Trump’s next impulsive tweet will do to the now severely weakened Western alliance; retreating from U.S. global leadership on all fronts; prompting Congress to actually consider attempting to take away the president’s authority to launch nuclear weapons due to Trump’s alarmingly unstable behavior; and, most importantly, ignoring the biggest threat of all, see below.

Trump’s saber rattling, juvenile name calling and imprudent tweeting has escalated the North Korean “problem” while completely missing the key point. Trump believes his reckless threats — see, e.g., “fire and fury” — make him appear “tough.” They don’t. He is, at heart, the same insecure coward he was when he boldly invoked a tiny bone spur to weasel himself out of harm’s way 50 years ago.

North Korea’s policy has one goal: regime survival. That means it needs a nuclear deterrent and delivery system. It will never give that up, period, regardless of any threats, sanctions or enticements. Negotiations toward this unrealistic aim are futile. Kim Jong Un knows that just one U.S. Ohio-class submarine lurking silently off his coast, armed with 24 Trident II D5 missiles carrying 72 nuclear warheads, can turn his country into an uninhabitable desert for the next 30,000 years. He talks a Trumpian game, but he understands the certain existential implications of launching a nuclear attack on the U.S. or one of our Asian allies. His nuclear assets are designed to deter us, with one exception that is the real danger a nuclear North Korea represents.

The administration seems stunningly unaware of this exception — the risk that the North Koreans could transfer nuclear and/or missile technology to a nonstate terrorist organization that would not hesitate to use them against the U.S. North Korea has a track record of participating in nuclear technology transfer. Kim would do this if he felt it was in his interest.

Containing the tech transfer threat is difficult. It requires a much more robust intelligence operation than we have deployed to date. We have some experience with this, gained in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Our concerns about former Soviet nuclear scientists and loosely controlled nuclear material turning up in places like Iran and Iraq prompted the U.S. to initiate a variety of containment programs that were successful.

Now we need to do something similar, mindful that today’s conditions are quite different. Fortunately, our intelligence agencies and technologies have advanced significantly in the last several decades. We have the capability to contain North Korean temptations. But we must deploy this know-how immediately. The stakes are huge. The time is short.

Canandaigua Academy graduate Richard Hermann is a law professor, legal blogger, author of seven books and part-time resident of the Finger Lakes.

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